Friday, April 29, 2005

Buchanan, O'Reilly, the Pope

You have to love Pat Buchanan. He's always tilting at one windmill or another, not unlike Ralph Nader, another of my favorite acts on the political stage. Neither is always wrong, both highlight issues often worth thinking about, and both run for president now and then. What could be better? There are differences between them, of course. Buchanan is often funny, usually intentionally, and Nader can be funny, too, although usually unintentionally. Anyway, Buchanan observed in his most recent column,

As the world mourned the passing of John Paul II, who never ceased defending the right to life of the unborn, a thought occurred. If George W. Bush had nominated John Paul II to a federal judgeship, every Senate Democrat would have voted to kill his nomination, and filibustered it to death if it ever reached the Senate floor.Hard to argue the logic. I wonder if that large claque of liberal Catholics out there ever wonders about this sort of thing? Probably not.

Bill O'Reilly is right now and then, too. He's a little frustrating, though, because he dances around on the political spectrum so much it's hard to get him in a comforting pigeonhole. On Pope Benedict XVI he wrote,

The elevation of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to head the Roman Catholic Church is a clear and concise message from the College of Cardinals: "We are royally teed off."Everybody knows that the new pontiff is a tough guy who will not only throw the moneychangers out of the temple, he'll kick them in the behind as they leave the building. Pope Benedict believes strongly in good and evil, and he's not shy about pointing fingers. His letter to American bishops about politicians and abortion cost John Kerry dearly in the last election.The cardinals, of course, perfectly understand that Benedict is not exactly a cuddly guy and will not be "reaching out," as they say in California. But his hard-line theological approach appeals to church elders who have had enough. ...

I believe organized religion can be a champion of human rights and provide resistance to secular societies, which, if they progress much further, will never be able to defeat the fanatical Islamic fundamentalists. The more permissive the western world becomes, the more it rejects discipline and avoids confronting evil, the greater the danger to freedom will be.I keep hearing liberals whine in media like CNN and the New York Times about the election of a "conservative" Pope. I wonder if they really thought it was likely that a new Pope would trash two millennia of Church doctrine in order to conform to their Weltanschauung?*

What Buchanan and Nader have in common is the quixotic nature of their policy positions and the entertainment they bring to the political process, even if unintentionally. You could put folks like Ross Perot, Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, Lyndon LaRouche, etc in the same category (not that I'm endorsing any of them!). The all-time champion, of course, was Harold E. Stassen, who tried unsuccessfully to win the Republican presidential nomination nine times, in 1948, 1952, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1976 and 1988. God bless them all!